ITStuff.ca - ITStaff is all about Windows, VMware, Hyper-V, Virtualization, HP Servers, Blades and other IT Technologies. An invaluable source of Tools and Scripts for IT Network Administrators. A valuable advice, Tips, Tricks and best practices for Net Admins.

Microsoft publishes a very large number of articles in its Knowledge Base (KB) but a lot are not translated and are available only in a machine translated version. The quality of these machine translations not being always perfect, Bernard Opic (ex-MVP Microsoft Office Outlook) offers translations into French of articles relating to Outlook, Exchange and Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO).

21 August 2007

The Universal TCP/IP Network Bootdisk is a DOS bootdisk that provides TCP/IP networking support. It's designed for use in Microsoft networking environments, on either peer-to-peer or domain based LANs. Currently 92 different network card drivers all included, all on the single 1.44MB disk!

Note: Take a look at Microsoft Article ID : 811497 to resolve a problems logging on to a Windows 2000-based server or a Windows 2003-based server

20 August 2007

Skype is pointing the finger at Windows Update for a critical system crash that wiped out the VoIP service for two days.

In a statement posted on the company's support page, the company claims: "The disruption was initiated by a massive restart of our user's computers across the globe within a very short timeframe as they re-booted after receiving a routine software update." This is presumably the Windows updates that were sent out on Patch Tuesday last week, which required the PC to be restarted.

"The abnormally high number of restarts affected Skype's network resources," the company adds. "This caused a flood of log-in requests, which, combined with the lack of peer-to-peer network resources, prompted a chain reaction that had a critical impact."

Skype, which hasn't suffered serious problems with Windows Update before, says its normal failsafes proved ineffective. "Normally Skype's peer-to-peer network has an inbuilt ability to self-heal, however, this event revealed a previously unseen software bug within the network resource allocation algorithm which prevented the self-healing function from working quickly. Regrettably, as a result of this disruption, Skype was unavailable to the majority of its users for approximately two days."

The company insists, however, that despite rumours to the contrary, it wasn't the victim of hackers. "The issue has now been identified explicitly within Skype. We can confirm categorically that no malicious activities were attributed or that our users' security was not, at any point, at risk."

This is actually not an indictment of Vista alone, but something I've seen in Windows for quite some time now: the user profile \TEMP directory. It fills up with the most amazing amount of trash imaginable, and over time it can cause programs to malfunction left and right in ways that defy analysis.

Vista does have a way to deal with it: the Disk Cleanup tool. which purges the \TEMP directory on demand. However, as a safety measure, it doesn't delete anything newer than one week -- for instance, temporary files created as part of a program's installation process.

17 August 2007

I’ve a few servers those same times I have to take a log from them. I’m interesting just in the LAST log from each server. Because of the huge numbers of the servers I’ve created a script Logs-from-Servers.bat, which helps me in my task. Additionally, this script takes a screenshot from each server.

Before show the content of my script I’d like to say what the prerequirements. I used a few tools in the script for simplify it. One is LINEX.exe the other one is LSGRAB.exe and the last 7za.exe

LINEX.exe helps to analyze and manipulate with each line in the TXT fail. LSGRAB.exe – command line tools, which takes a screenshot from the remote server. 7za.exe - command line tools, which create a ZIP-archive of all logs.

Logs-from-Servers.bat analyzes a file SRVLIST.txt. In the SRVLIST.txt located a list of all my servers. This is an example of the SRVLIST.txt:

Any person, who has the Microsoft MVP status, can get one INLETEX Easy Remote Control (ERC) PRO Version single-user NFR (Not For Resale) licenses of free of charge. This offer will be available from August 1, 2007 till July 31, 2008. To get free licenses, you just need to contact InletEx and include in your message, your full name, MVP status, link with the status confirmation and titles of necessary programs and we will reply to you during 72 hours.

If you don't already know ERC, here's a short presentation of this very nice remote administration software.

InletEX ERC-Easy Remote Control can help you eliminate problem to effectual remote support. Easy Remote Control (ERC) is one of the best programs for remote administration under Windows that allow you to work remotely on a computer using the regular graphic user interface (GUI).

Easy Remote Control is based on a wide experience of many System Administrators and was tested with them before it was released.

The main goals are simplicity and comfort, therefore the name Easy Remote Control.

Easy Remote Control can help System Administrators or Helpdesk representatives solve multiple problems remotely and with ease.

Many administrators are familiar with an opportunity of cloning Windows OS (Sysprep). I already described process of cloning.

Recently, one my client has put a task, to install one Windows server, to set up all and to prepare system for cloning. Also it was required, that on all servers would be static IP addresses.

Equally, it's a not so complicated, but we have only one small problem. At cloning, on different servers Windows set different a name for network cards, once Local Area Connection, once Local Area Connection 2, sometimes Local Area Connection 5 and so on. As you understand, it makes a certain inconvenience at automation of process. To solve the given problem I’ve created a script, Set-IP.bat.

At start Set-IP.bat will ask what IP Address, Subnet Mask and Default Gateway to define on a network card of the given server. I wish to pay your attention that the script itself will determine a name of a network card and will rename on necessary to you, in my case I renamed it to Production Network 1. Before the Sysprep, I have created directory C:\Scripts and have put down there Set-IP.bat.

Then in key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce

created a Key SET-IP in format REG_SZ with value C:\Scripts\SET-IP.bat

Here contents of SET-IP.bat:

@Echo offSET /P IP=Please Enter the IP Address for this Server:SET /P Subnet=Please Enter the Subnet Musk for this Server:SET /P GW=Please Enter the IP Address of the Defaul Gateway for this Server:SET /P DSRV=Please Enter the IP Address of the DNS for this Server: For /F "tokens=3* delims= " %%a in ('ipconfig^|find /i "Ethernet adapter "') do Set NIC=:%%a %%bFor /F "tokens=1 delims=:" %%c in ('echo %NIC%^|find /i "Local Area"') do Set NIC=%%c

Most Windows 2000 / 2003 servers running IIS, have remote registry access disabled, for security reasons. by using psservice I've write a script to determine if the IISADMIN and W3SVC service is running on remote Server:

Note: In my case, the Server's IP is: 172.1.2.12You can change the line "@echo The %SERVICE1% on %SERVER1% is %STATE%" in Status block to any command, for example to command that send e-mail to you about status of the Server.